All Clear

London—27 October 1940

THE MOMENT POLLY RETURNED FROM SEEING MARJORIE, Eileen said, “Mr. Fetters rang up while you were gone. He said they’d found three bodies in Padgett’s.” Which meant Polly hadn’t had to go to the hospital after all.

She wished she hadn’t. She’d gone there to prove the number of dead wasn’t a discrepancy so that Mike could stop worrying that he’d altered events, only to find that she’d altered them.

Don’t be ridiculous, she thought. Historians can’t do that. And there were dozens of reasons why Mr. Dunworthy could have got the time of the St. Paul’s UXB’s removal wrong. The newspaper could have moved the time up to throw the Germans off. During the V-1 and V-2 attacks, they’d printed false accounts of where the rockets fell to trick the Germans into shortening their range. They might have done something like that with the UXB, to convince the Nazis the bomb was easier to defuse than it had been. Or they could simply have got the time wrong, like the nurses at Padgett’s had got the number wrong.

You thought the number of fatalities was a discrepancy, she reassured herself, and it turned out it wasn’t. And look at your last assignment. For a few weeks there, you were convinced you’d altered events, but you hadn’t. Everything worked out exactly the same as it would have if you hadn’t been there.

And this will, too. The doctors say Marjorie’s going to make a full recovery, and it isn’t as if she married her airman or got knocked up. In a few days she’ll be out of hospital and back at Townsend Brothers, just as if nothing had happened. And all I have to do is make certain Mike doesn’t find out what Marjorie said. And that Eileen kept the Hodbins from going on the City of Benares.

She wondered if she should caution Eileen again not to say anything about that, but she didn’t want her inquiring why. And Eileen wasn’t likely to bring up the subject of the Hodbins to Mike for fear that he’d make her write to them and tell them where she lived. At any rate, the only thing on Eileen’s mind was what had happened at Padgett’s.

“Mr. Fetters says they were three charwomen,” Eileen said. “They didn’t work at Padgett’s. They worked at Selfridges. He said they must have been on their way to work when the raids began and took shelter in Padgett’s basement.”

Which meant Mike could also stop worrying about the fatalities being the retrieval team, and so could she. And now all I have to worry about is where the team is.

And whether it will show up before my deadline. And about the possibility that Oxford’s been destroyed.

And about Eileen, who’d been badly shaken by the knowledge that “we could have been in that basement shelter, too.”

“No, we couldn’t,” Polly had said firmly. “Because I know when and where the raids are, remember?” At any rate till January.

“You’re right.” Eileen looked reassured. “It was a tremendous comfort yesterday going to Stepney, knowing there weren’t going to be any sirens.”

Except the one which had sounded at Townsend Brothers. Had that been a discrepancy, too?

“Oh, and I wanted to ask you,” Eileen said, “Mr. Fetters said Padgett’s is reopening ‘on a limited basis’ next month, and asked me if I was interested in coming back to work there, and I wondered what I should tell him. I mean, we mightn’t be here by then …”

Or we might.

“I’ll ask Mike,” Polly said. “I’m going to check on him now and take him a blanket.”

“Can I come with you?”

“No, there are too many people about. I’ll show you tonight where the drop is. Oh, I nearly forgot. I think I found the airfield Gerald’s at. Was it Boscombe Down?”

“No,” Eileen said. She looked thoughtful. “Though the B sounds right. I’m sorry …”

“It’s all right,” Polly said, fighting back disappointment. She’d been so certain that was it. “I’ll go ask Mrs. Rickett if she has an ABC. If she does, you can look through the names while I’m gone.”

Mrs. Rickett didn’t have one. Miss Laburnum was certain she had one “somewhere” and looked through every drawer and cupboard in her room before she said,

“Oh, that’s right, I lent it to my niece when she was visiting from Cheshire.” And then insisted on showing Polly two coconuts she’d managed to scrounge up for the play and relating in detail the time she’d seen Sir Godfrey onstage when she was a girl. It was two o’clock before Polly was able to escape, by which time she was convinced that Mike would be dead from hypothermia.

He wasn’t, and even though his teeth were chattering, he refused to leave the drop. “There have been contemps in the area all day. It’ll have a much better chance of opening after the raids start tonight.”

“But it won’t help to have you freeze to death,” she said, and tried to persuade him to let her spell him long enough for him to go to Mrs. Leary’s and eat his supper, but he refused.

“The more coming and going there is, the greater the chance someone will see us,” he argued.

“Won’t you at least let me bring you another blanket and something to eat?”

“No, I’ll be fine. Where are the raids tonight?”

“The East End, the City, and Islington.”

“Good. Then there won’t be firemen or rescue workers around here to see the shimmer. Were you able to find out anything about the casualties at Padgett’s?”

“Yes.” She told him about the three dead charwomen.

“So it wasn’t the retrieval team. And there wasn’t a discrepancy. Good,” he said, sounding relieved. “What about Phipps’s whereabouts? Were you able to get hold of a railway guide?”

“Not yet, but I’ll look at the one at Townsend Brothers tomorrow, and I should be able to find out some more airfields at Notting Hill Gate tonight,” she said, thinking of her troupe mates Lila and Viv. “Is there anything else you want us to do?”

“Yes, buy some newspapers for us to use for our personal ads. And keep pumping Eileen about what else Gerald said. You haven’t figured out what his joke about getting her driving authorization meant, have you?”

“No. The only thing I’ve been able to think of is that RAF pilots carried their papers in a waterproof wallet in case they had to ditch in the Channel, but the wallet wasn’t red, and I don’t see what—”

“But at least that tells us we’re on the right track about his being at an airfield,” he said. “You’d better go. When are the sirens supposed to go tonight?”

“I don’t know.” She explained about having left before Colin got the siren data to her. “The raids begin at 7:50. Here, take my coat. I can borrow one for tonight,” she said, draping it over his knees. “And if it begins to rain again, go home. Don’t try to be a hero.”

“I won’t,” he promised, and she hurried back to the boardinghouse, got Eileen, took her to Notting Hill Gate, then sent her off to Holborn to see if the lending library had an ABC.

“If they don’t,” she said, “borrow some newspapers.” She told Eileen about Mike’s ideas of using personal ads to tell the retrieval team where they were.

“I know where we can find examples of the right kind of ads,” Eileen said eagerly. “A Murder Is Announced.”

“What?” Polly said.

“It’s a mystery novel. By Agatha Christie. It’s full of personal ads … Oh, no, that won’t work,” she said glumly.

“Why not? The library at Holborn has several Agatha Christie novels, and if they don’t have it there, I’m certain one of the bookshops in Charing Cross Road—”

“No, they won’t. It wasn’t written till after the war.” She cheered up. “But I think there’s one in The Dawson Pedigree that we could use.” She started toward the Central Line.

“Wait,” Polly said. “You need to be back before half past ten. That’s when the trains stop.”

“Yes, Fairy Godmother,” Eileen said. “Any other instructions?”

“Yes. Keep a close watch on your belongings. There’s a band of urchins at Holborn who pick people’s pockets.”

“Of course. It’s my fate to be surrounded by horrible children no matter where I go. But at least it’s not the Hodbins,” she said, and went off to catch her train. Polly went out to the District Line platform, where the troupe was rehearsing, to talk to Lila and Viv.

They weren’t there. “They went to a dance,” Miss Laburnum reported.

“On a Sunday night?” the rector said, shocked.

“It’s an American USO dance,” Miss Laburnum explained. “I don’t know what Sir Godfrey will say when he gets here. He so wanted to rehearse the shipwreck scene.”

What Sir Godfrey said, when he arrived a moment later, was, “ ‘False varlets! How all occasions do inform against me. They hath outvillained villainy!’ Their foul perfidy leaves us no choice but to rehearse the rescue scene. We shall begin at the point at which the castaways have heard the ship’s gun and have all rushed down to the beach.”

Polly and Sir Godfrey were the only ones in that scene, which meant she had no chance to look through Sir Godfrey’s Times for more airfields. And after rehearsal was over, when she asked Mrs. Brightford if she knew the names of any, Sir Godfrey said dryly, “Does this mean that you, too, will be abandoning us to ‘foot it featly here and there,’ Lady Mary?”

“No,” she said, hoping Holborn had had an ABC.

“It didn’t,” Eileen reported on her return. “And it only had two newspapers. The librarian said children keep taking them for the scrap-paper drive. But she had heaps of Agatha Christies.

“Look,” she said excitedly when they reached the emergency staircase, showing Polly a paperback book. “Murder in the Calais Coach!”

“Is that the one you thought had a personal ad in it?”

“No, that’s not by Agatha Christie, it’s by Dorothy Sayers. At least I think that’s what it was in. It might have been in Murder Must Advertise instead, and at any rate, the library didn’t have either one. But”—she produced another paperback—“it did have The ABC Murders.”

Which was not quite the same as an ABC. But, as Eileen said, it was full of place-names, which might help her remember. Eileen had also retrieved a wadded-up edition of the Daily Mirror from a dustbin.

She handed it to Polly, and Polly began looking through it for the names of airfields and any references to the afternoon raid. There was nothing about bombing—

which was a relief—but nothing about a false alarm either, or an aeroplane crash.

There was a story about the Battle of Britain, which said the RAF’s efforts had “changed the course of the war,” and which listed several airfields.

“Bicester?” Polly asked.

“No.”

“Broadwell?”

“No.”

It wasn’t Greenham Common or Grove or Bickmarsh either. “Have you had any luck remembering what else Gerald said?” Polly asked her.

“Nothing useful. I remember Linna was speaking on the phone to someone who was angry that the lab had changed the order of their French Revolution assignments.”

Let’s hope they’re not trapped there like we are here, Polly thought. They might end up being guillotined.

“I feel so stupid, not being able to remember,” Eileen said.

“You had no way of knowing it was important,” Polly reassured her. “We’ll find the name of the airfield tomorrow when I buy the ABC.”

“Or your drop might have opened,” Eileen said, cheering up. “And Mike will be waiting for us outside the station so we can all go through together.” But when the all clear went at five, he wasn’t there or at Mrs. Rickett’s.

“He very likely went back to Mrs. Leary’s to sleep when the raids ended,” Polly said.

“Should we go to the drop to check?” Eileen asked.

“No, there are too many people about in the morning. And we need to get you a ration book before I go to work, so you can begin eating at Mrs. Rickett’s.”

But applying for a new ration book required an identity card, which had also been in Eileen’s handbag, and since she’d been living in Stepney, she couldn’t apply for a new one at the local council office. She had to go to the one nearest to where she’d been living.

“Which is where?” Polly asked the clerk at the Kensington council office.

“In Bethnal Green.”

“Bethnal Green?”

“Yes,” the clerk said, and told them the address.

“Are there raids in Bethnal Green today?” Eileen whispered as they left the counter.

“No,” Polly said.

“But you looked so—”

“I thought it might be where Gerald had said he was going. It begins with a B and has two words.”

“No, I’m almost certain the second word began with a P.”

Polly sent Eileen off and hurried to work and up to the book department, but the railway guide was no longer there. “A man from the Ministry of War came in last week and took it,” Ethel said.

“How all occasions do inform against us,” Polly thought. “Would you have a railway map, then?”

“No, he confiscated those as well. To keep them from falling into German hands. You know, in case of invasion. Though if they’ve got as far as Oxford Street, I shouldn’t think they’d need maps, would you?”

“No,” Polly said, but that wasn’t what worried her. What worried her was that the Ministry of War had come in last week. What did they know that had made them think invasion was coming now? Hitler had called off Operation Sea Lion at the end of September and postponed the invasion till spring.

What if he didn’t? Polly thought. What if this is a discrepancy?

It could be a disastrous one. By spring he’d decided to abandon the invasion altogether so he could concentrate on attacking Russia. If instead he invaded now …

“Are you all right?” Ethel asked her.

“Yes. If you haven’t any railway maps, what about an ordinary map of England?” she asked.

“No, he took those as well. I take it someone in your family’s a planespotter?”

“Yes,” Polly said, latching on to the explanation. “He’s twelve.”

“My little brother spends all his time scanning the skies for Heinkels and Stukas.”

“So does my nephew,” Polly said, and worked the conversation around to airfields. She got several more names from her and another one on her lunch break, though none had two words of which the second began with a P.

But when she returned to her counter, there was good news. Miss Snelgrove had told Doreen that Marjorie was being released from hospital and would be coming back to Townsend Brothers soon. Which meant this was just like her other assignment—it had looked like she’d altered events, but in the end things had worked out.

She should have had more faith in time-travel theory and in the complexity of a chaotic system.

And she should have remembered her history lessons. The code for the D-Day invasion had been broken by the Nazis, which could have been catastrophic for the Allies—but when the wireless operator had shown Field Marshal Rundstedt the Verlaine poem, he’d ignored it. “I hardly think the Allies will announce the invasion over the wireless,” he’d said.

And there were hundreds of examples like that scattered throughout history. “All’s well that ends well,” Polly thought, quoting Shakespeare and Sir Godfrey, and focused on quizzing Sarah Steinberg, whose brother was in the RAF, about airfields.

By the end of the day, she’d obtained a dozen names. She tried them out on Eileen when she came back from Bethnal Green, with no luck. Eileen hadn’t been able to get an identity card either. “The clerk in Bethnal Green told me I had to go to the National Registration office, but it isn’t open on Monday.”

“It’s probably just as well,” Polly said. “Mrs. Rickett serves trench pie on Monday night.”

“What’s that?”

“No one knows. Mr. Dorming’s convinced she makes it out of rats.”

“It can’t possibly be that bad,” Eileen said. “And at any rate, I don’t care. I can bear anything now that I’ve found you and Mike. I’d be willing to eat sawdust.”

“That would be Mrs. Rickett’s victory loaf, which we have on Thursdays,” Polly said. She tried to give Eileen some money for lunch, but she refused it.

“We’ll need all our money for our train fare to the airfield,” Eileen said, and went off to see if Selfridges had an ABC.

It didn’t. And neither did the Daily Herald’s office. When Polly got off work, Eileen and Mike were both waiting for her outside the staff entrance, and they reported no luck in finding one.

And no luck with the drop. “I stayed there till two,” Mike said, “and nary a shimmer of a shimmer.”

He’d spent the rest of the afternoon at the Herald, going through July and August editions for airfield names. As soon as they got to Notting Hill Gate and the emergency staircase—which was colder than ever—he tried them on Eileen. “Bedford?”

“No,” Eileen said. “I’m convinced it was two words.”

“Beachy Head?”

“That sounds a bit like it … no.”

“She thinks the second word begins with a P,” Polly said.

He checked his list. “Bentley Priory?”

Eileen frowned. “No … it wasn’t Priory. It was Paddock or Place or …” She frowned, attempting to remember.

He checked the list again. “No Ps,” he said. “How about Biggin Hill?”

Eileen hesitated. “Perhaps … I’m not certain … I’m so sorry. I thought I’d know it when I heard it, but now I’ve heard so many … I’m not certain …”

“It would be a logical choice,” Mike said. “It was in the thick of the Battle of Britain.”

“So was Beachy Head,” Polly said. “And Bentley Priory. And that’s the one nearest Oxford. Perhaps we should try that first.”

“But it’s not just an airfield, it’s the RAF command center,” Mike said, “which means security will be tighter. Biggin Hill’s closest. I say we try that first and then the other two. Now, what about messages we can send? Did you tell Eileen my idea, Polly?”

“Yes,” she said, and to prevent Eileen from launching into an account of mystery novels which hadn’t been written yet, she continued, “How’s this for an ad?

‘Historian seeks situation involving travel. Available immediately’?”

“Great,” Mike said, scribbling it down. “And we can do variations of your ‘Meet me in Trafalgar Square or Kensington Gardens or the British Museum.’ ”

“There are lots of notices looking for soldiers who were at Dunkirk,” Eileen mused. “What about ‘Anyone having information regarding the whereabouts of Michael Davies, last seen at Dunkirk, contact E. O’Reilly,’ and Mrs. Rickett’s address?”

Mike wrote their suggestions down. “What about crosswords?” He pointed at the Herald’s puzzle. “I could compose one with our names in the clues, like ‘This bird wants a cracker.’ Or ‘What an Italian tower might say if asked its name?’ ”

“Absolutely not,” Polly said.

“Because they’re bad puns?”

“No, because a crossword nearly derailed D-Day.”

“How?”

“Two weeks before the invasion, five of the top-top-secret code words appeared in the Daily Herald’s crossword puzzle: ‘Overlord,’ ‘mulberry,’ ‘Utah,’ ‘sword,’

and I forget the other one. The military was convinced the Germans had tumbled to the invasion and was ready to call the entire invasion off.”

“Had they?” Eileen asked. “Tumbled to it?”

“No. The puzzle’s author was a schoolmaster who’d been doing them for years. He told the military his students and dozens of other people composed the clues and that they’d have no way of knowing which puzzle they’d be in, and in the end they decided it was just a bizarre coincidence.”

“And was it?” Mike asked.

“No. Forty years later the Herald published a story about it, and a man who’d been one of the schoolmaster’s students confessed he’d overheard two Army officers talking and had co-opted the words for clues with no idea what they meant.”

“But the puzzle incident wasn’t till 1944,” Mike said. “It isn’t likely British Intelligence would be reading crossword puzzles now—”

“In which case the retrieval team won’t be either. I think they’re much more likely to read personal ads. There are lots of ‘losts.’ Perhaps we could do something with that.”

“Like ‘Lost: historian. Reward for safe return’?”

“No,” Polly said, “but we could say we’d lost something and give our name and address. Here’s one. ‘Lost: pair of brown carpet slippers on Northern Line platform, Bank Station. If found—’ ”

“Oh,” Eileen said. They looked inquiringly at her. “You told me to remember any detail, no matter how irrelevant, about my conversations with Gerald—”

“Does Gerald’s airfield have the word ‘bank’ in it?” Mike asked eagerly, grabbing for his list of names. “Glaston Bank?”

“No, not that part. The bit about the slippers.”

They looked blankly at her.

“ ‘Slippers’ sounds like ‘slippage.’ ”

“Slippage?”

“Yes. Linna was on the phone while I was talking to Gerald, and whoever she was talking to wanted to know how much slippage there was on someone’s drop, and then when I went through to Backbury, Badri was talking to someone about an increase in slippage, and Linna asked me if the slippage the last time I went through had increased from the other times.”

“And had it?” Mike asked.

“No, and when I told her that, she said, ‘Good,’ and looked at Badri.”

“Who was she talking to, do you know?”

“No. I assume it was Mr. Dunworthy. She called him sir.”

“And it was an increase?” Mike asked eagerly. “Not a decrease? You’re sure?”

“Yes. Why?”

Because then there wasn’t too little slippage, Polly thought. And it couldn’t have let Mike—or me—go to a place where we could alter events.

“They questioned Phipps on his slippage, too,” Mike said. “Did they say anything to you about it when you came through, Polly?”

“They asked me to note how much there was and tell them when I reported in.”

“And how much was there?”

“Four and a half days. It was only supposed to be an hour or two. I assumed there was a divergence point that—”

“I don’t think so,” Mike said excitedly. “I think a bunch of drops were experiencing an increase in slippage, and it was enough to worry them. Which means it couldn’t have been a few days’ worth. It must have been weeks. Or months.”

“And that’s why our retrieval teams aren’t here?” Polly said. “Because the slippage sent them to November or December instead?”

He nodded.

“So all we need to do is wait for them to come fetch us?” Eileen said eagerly.

“No. It might be a while before they get here, and in case you haven’t noticed, this is kind of a dangerous place. The sooner we can find a working drop and get out of here, the better.”

“But if there’s slippage, then Gerald’s drop won’t open either, will it?” Polly asked.

“Even if it doesn’t, he may know more about what the slippage problem is and how long we’re looking at. That means finding him’s still our first priority. And our second’s to make sure the retrieval team can find us when they get here. Eileen, have you had a letter from Lady Caroline?”

“No, not yet,” Eileen said, looking at Polly. She was obviously afraid he was going to ask her if she’d written the Hodbins.

“What about you, Mike?” Polly asked hastily. “Have you left a trail of bread crumbs for your team to follow?”

“Yes, I wrote the hospital in Dover and Sister Carmody at Orpington, and I sent my address to the barmaid at the Crown and Anchor.”

“Barmaid?” Eileen said.

“Yes.” He told them about Daphne’s coming to see him in hospital. “She’ll tell everybody in Saltram-on-Sea. I’ll put this ‘Meet me in Victoria Station’ message in tomorrow’s paper when I go down to the Express in the morning. I’m going to see if I can talk the paper into having me write a piece on ‘Our Biggin Hill Heroes.’

That’ll help me get access, and I can earn some money while I’m at it. Maybe they’ll even pay my way.”

“But aren’t we all going?” Eileen asked.

“No, I’ll be able to get there quicker and find out more in a shorter time if I’m on my own.”

“And I can’t leave my job,” Polly said.

“I know,” Eileen said reluctantly. “It’s only … I think it’s a bad idea for us to split up when it took us so long to find one another.”

“We’re not splitting up,” Mike said. “We’re doing what Shackleton did.”

“Shackleton? Is he an historian?” Eileen asked.

“No, Ernest Shackleton, the Antarctic explorer. They were trapped in the ice, and he had to leave his crew behind to go get help. If he didn’t, none of them would get out. That’s what I’m doing—going off to find help. If Gerald’s at Biggin Hill, I’ll ring you and have you come there.”

“You won’t go through without us?”

“Of course not. I’ll get you both out, I promise. In the meantime, Eileen, I want you to get your name on file at the department stores, and Polly, keep trying to scout up an ABC.”

“I will,” she said.

She tried, with no luck at all. She also made a list of the next week’s raids for Mike and Eileen to memorize, spent a fruitless evening in Victoria Station “by the clock” waiting for the retrieval team and being accosted by soldiers, and then went to rehearsal in the hopes that Lila and Viv would be there. They were, but the troupe was rehearsing Act Two, which everyone was in, so she had no chance to ask them.

Mike returned from Biggin Hill Friday morning. “No luck,” he told Polly, leaning over her counter at Townsend Brothers. “He’s not at Biggin Hill. I got a look at every one of the ground crew and all the pilots. I don’t suppose Eileen remembered the airfield name while I was gone?”

Polly shook her head.

“I was afraid of that. I brought a new list of names for her to look at. Is she at Mrs. Rickett’s?”

“No,” Polly said after a hasty look around to see if Miss Snelgrove was watching. “She’s still making the rounds of the department stores. She should be back soon.

She said she was going to check in at lunch.”

“When’s your lunch break?”

“Half past twelve—yes, may I help you, sir?”

“May …? Oh, yes,” he said, thankfully not looking over at Miss Snelgrove, who’d suddenly appeared. “I’d like to see some stockings.”

“Yes, sir,” Polly said, bringing out a box and opening it. “These are very nice, sir.”

He leaned forward to finger them. “Do you have these in any other colors?” he asked, and then, under his breath, “I’ll meet you and Eileen at twelve-thirty at Lyons Corner House.”

“Yes, sir. They also come in powder pink and ecru,” and, to give him an exit opportunity, “I’m afraid we’re out of ivory.”

“Oh, too bad. My girl had her heart set on ivory,” he said, and left, mouthing “Twelve-thirty” at her.

Eileen still wasn’t back by then. Polly left a note for her and went to tell Mike, who’d got them a table in a secluded corner.

“I told her to meet us here,” she said, shrugging off her coat.

He handed her the menu. “I’m afraid they’re out of everything but the fish-paste sandwich.”

“Which is still better than anything at Mrs. Rickett’s,” Polly said. She handed him a sheet of paper.

“More airfield names?”

“No, the upcoming raids. The worst one’s on the twelfth. Sloane Square Underground station, seventy-nine casualties.”

“And no break in the nightly raids, I see,” he said, looking at the list.

“Not till next week. Then they shift to the industrial cities—Coventry and then Birmingham and Wolverhamp—”

“Coventry?”

“Yes. It was hit on the fourteenth. What’s the matter?”

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” he said excitedly. “We’ve only been considering the historians who are here right now, not the ones who were here earlier.”

“Before 1940, you mean?”

“No, not earlier now,” he said. “Earlier in Oxford time. Historians who had World War II assignments last year. Or ten years ago. Like Ned Henry and Verity Kindle. Weren’t they in Coventry the night it was bombed?”

“Yes, but that was two years ago … Oh,” she said, seeing what he was getting at. It didn’t matter when historians had done it in their past. This was time travel.

Here in 1940, they would do it two weeks from now.

“But there’s no way we could get to Ned and Verity. We don’t know where they were except that they were in the middle of Coventry, in the heart of the fire. And it’s much too dangerous—”

“Not any more dangerous than Dunkirk,” Mike said. “And we know one place they were—in the cathedral.”

“As it was burning down,” Polly said. “You can’t be thinking of trying to go there. The area around the cathedral was nearly a firestorm.”

“It might also be our fastest way out. We wouldn’t necessarily have to find Ned and Verity. The drop was inside the cathedral, wasn’t it? All we have to do is find it.”

“Mike, we can’t go through their drop.”

“Why not? We know it was working.”

“But we can’t use it because it was two years ago. We can’t go through to a time we’re already in. Their drop opens on Oxford two years ago, and two years ago—”

“We were all in Oxford,” he said. “Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. But we can send a message through them.”

“A message?”

“Yes. We find Verity and Ned before they go back and have them tell the lab where we are and that our drops won’t open and to reset the drop so it opens in our time. There’s no reason we can’t do that, is there?”

“Yes, there is. Because we didn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. If we’d found them and told them what had happened, Oxford would have known what was going to happen when it sent us through. We’d have known what was going to happen.”

He considered that. “Maybe they couldn’t tell us because it would create a paradox. If we knew we were going to be trapped, we wouldn’t come, and we had to come because we had come.”

“But Mr. Dunworthy wouldn’t have let us come. You know how over-protective he is. He’d never have let you come knowing they couldn’t get you out after you were injured.” And he wouldn’t have let me come knowing I had a deadline.

But she couldn’t say that. “This is a man who was worried I might get my foot caught in a barrage-balloon rope,” she said instead. “He’d never have let us get trapped in the Blitz. Or let you go to Coventry to get us out. The entire city burned. It would be suicide for you to go there. You’re here to observe heroes, not die trying to be one.”

“Then we need to come up with somebody besides Ned and Verity. Who else was here? Didn’t Dunworthy go to the Blitz at some point?”

“He went several times, but—”

“When?”

“I don’t know. I know he observed the big raids on May tenth and eleventh, because he talked about watching the fire in the House of Commons, and that happened on the tenth.”

“And you said before that the ninth and tenth were the worst raids of the Blitz?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Nothing. We need something sooner. When else was he here?”

“I don’t know. I remember him telling a story about attempting to get to his drop, and the gates at Charing Cross Railway Station being shut and him not being able to get in.”

“But you don’t know the date?”

“No.”

“But if he told you he was trying to get to his drop, that means it must have been somewhere in Charing Cross.”

“No, it doesn’t. He might have been taking the train to his drop. He could have been going anywhere.”

“But it’s a place to start, and we can’t afford to leave any stone unturned. I want you to go check it while I’m at Beachy Head. Unless one of these names I got at Biggin Hill turns out to be Phipps’s airfield. Speaking of which, what’s keeping Eileen?” he asked, glancing at his watch. “I need to read them to her. I managed to wangle a ride to Beachy Head, and the guy’s leaving at two, but I don’t want to waste my time there if Gerald’s at one of these other airfields.”

Eileen hurried in just as Mike was paying the bill, saying, “Sorry, I was applying at Mary Marsh, and they kept me waiting.”

Mike read her the list. She shook her head decisively at each of the names.

“Okay, then, it’s Beachy Head,” he said. He hurried off to catch his ride. “I’ll be back before the fourteenth.”

So you can go to Coventry, Polly thought.

She had to keep him from doing that. Which meant she had to find Gerald’s airfield.

Over the next few days, she spent her lunch breaks going to Victoria and St. Pancras Stations to copy down two-word names beginning with B and P from the departure boards and her evenings incurring Sir Godfrey’s wrath by trying to get additional airfield names from Lila and Viv, but they were almost no help at all.

“We nearly always go to the dances at Hendon,” Lila said.

“There’s one on Saturday,” Viv told her. “You and your cousin could come with us.”

She nearly accepted. They could ask the airmen they danced with where else they’d been stationed. But she was afraid if they weren’t there when Mike came back, he’d decide to go to Coventry, which would be not only dangerous but pointless.

Because if Mike had found Ned and Verity and given them the message, that would mean Mr. Dunworthy had known for years that all this was going to happen and not only allowed it to but arranged it. Arranged for Mike to go to Dunkirk, for Eileen to go to a manor where the evacuees had the measles, had manipulated and lied to all of them from the moment they entered Oxford.

It’s impossible, she told herself.

But even as she thought it, she was remembering. He made me bring extra money, he made me learn the raids through December thirty-first. He insisted I work in a department store that was never hit during the entire Blitz. And if they had managed to get a message through, then he’d have known they were pulled out in time and that they weren’t in any actual danger.

But if Mr. Dunworthy had lied, then why hadn’t he sent Mike to Dunkirk in the first place instead of scheduling him to do Pearl Harbor and letting him get his Land-A implant? And why had Linna and Badri been questioning everyone about increased slippage if they already knew about it?

Mike still wasn’t back by the twelfth, and they’d had no word from him. It hadn’t taken him this long when he went to Biggin Hill.

What if he went to Coventry without telling us? Polly thought, looking over at the lifts from her stocking counter, hoping one would open and Mike would emerge.

One of them finally did, but it wasn’t Mike. It was Eileen. “I came for two reasons,” she said. “I’m determined to have the name of Gerald’s airfield for Mike when he gets back from Beachy Head, so I came to tell you I’m going to go scour the secondhand bookshops for an old ABC or a book about the RAF or something with airfield names, and I wanted to make certain there weren’t any raids in Charing Cross Road today.”

“There aren’t any daytime raids anywhere in London today,” Polly reassured her.

“Oh, good. I’m sorry I’m such an infant about them—”

“It’s not being an infant to be frightened of someone who’s trying to kill you,” Polly said. “You said you had two reasons for coming?”

“Yes. I wanted to tell you I found out why Lady Caroline didn’t write. I got another letter from Mrs. Bascombe. Lady Caroline’s husband was killed.”

“Oh, dear. Had you met him?”

“No, Lord Denewell worked in London at the War Office, and the house he was staying in was bombed—”

“Lord Denewell? You worked for Lady Denewell?”

“Yes, at Denewell Manor. Why? Is something wrong? Did you meet Lord Denewell?”

“No. Sorry. I saw Miss Snelgrove looking this way. Perhaps you’d better go—”

“I will. I only wanted to ask you if you thought it would be all right for me to send her a letter of condolence? I mean, with my being a servant and everything. I’m afraid she’ll think I’m acting above my place, but—”

Polly cut her off. “Miss Snelgrove’s coming. We’ll discuss it tonight. Go look for your ABC.”

Eileen nodded. “I won’t come back till I have either a list of airfields or a map in hand.”

She started toward the lifts. “Wait,” Polly said, running after her. “If you have to ask for a map, tell them you want it for your nephew who’s interested in planespotting. That way they won’t be suspicious.”

“Planespotting … I never thought of that,” Eileen said. “Polly, listen, I’ve just had an idea—uh-oh, Miss Snelgrove at eleven o’clock,” she whispered. “I’ll see you tonight.” And she hurried off.

“Miss Sebastian,” Miss Snelgrove said.

“Yes, ma’am. I was only—”

“Miss Hayes will be returning to work today, and I’d like you to be here to assist her, so if you wouldn’t mind waiting to take your lunch break till two—”

“I’m happy to,” Polly said, and meant it. Marjorie was coming back to work. Polly’d been afraid she’d been too traumatized by her experience to stay in London, but she was coming back.

And when she arrived, she was nearly her old rosy-cheeked self. I was right, Polly thought. I didn’t alter the end result. Everything’s worked out just as it would have if Marjorie’d never been injured.

“I’ll wrap your parcels for you till your arm’s better,” she told Marjorie, “though you can no doubt do better with one hand than I can with two. I never have got the hang of it, and now that the paper and string are rationed—”

But Marjorie was shaking her head. “I’m not staying. I only came to tell everyone goodbye.”

“Goodbye?”

“Yes. I’ve handed in my notice.”

“But—”

“I … the nurses in hospital were so kind to me. I wouldn’t have made it if it weren’t for them, and it made me think about what I was doing to help win the war. I couldn’t bear to see Hitler come marching down Oxford Street because I hadn’t done all I could.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve joined the Royal Army Nursing Service.”

There are six evacuated children in our house. My wife and I hate them so much that we have decided to take away something for Christmas.

—LETTER,

1940